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Filmmaker Ky Dickens talked to four of them in her film “Sole Survivor,” including Cecelia Cichan, the then-4-year-old girl who survived the crash of a plane en route to Phoenix in 1987, in which 156 people were killed. Cichan had never spoken about the accident publicly before.

There is a certain fascination, probably morbid, to listening to these people talk about their lives. Survivor guilt weighs heavily, though to varying degrees, on each. Other, less-expected problems also crop up. But some of the stories, frankly, are more interesting than others. One in particular is so intriguing that Dickens might have been better served to focus on only it.

That’s the story of Jim Polehinke, the co-pilot of a 2006 crash in Lexington, Ky. He was saved by the quick actions of a rescue team but was badly injured, losing a leg and being paralyzed. In addition to his physical wounds, Polehinke carries the guilt of responsibility. His first thought upon realizing he had survived, he says, was of the other passengers he was flying.

More interesting still is what caused the crash, or at least what the National Transportation Safety Board says caused it. Dickens lays it out like a detective story, bits and pieces here, an interview there. The wife of the deceased co-pilot is particularly good at putting everything in perspective. So, too, is the son of a woman who was killed on the plane. He’s a nice guy with a bitterness one suspects will never subside.

This case involves the most conflicting emotions, the biggest swirl of confusion. We also hear from George Lamson Jr., who survived a 1985 crash in Reno that killed, among the others, his father. Lamson was a teenager when the plane crashed, and media coverage made much of his poise in the days and weeks that followed.

But that became a burden, Lamson says, an expectation that he was meant for something special, leading to bad choices. When his daughter says if it hadn’t been for the crash, Lamson would probably be more successful, it’s heartbreaking.

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Lamson reaches out to all the other sole survivors, but meets only with Bahia Bakari, who survived a 2009 crash in the Indian Ocean that killed her mother. It is clear from what we see that Lamson is longing for answers to the questions that have dogged his life for years, and Bakari is just starting down that road.

Dickens spent less time with Cichan. She has maintained her privacy since the crash, and, given the structure of the film, still seems to stand apart. But she seems happy, well-adjusted. She’s married and in graduate school. She has a tattoo of a plane on her wrist. It was a choice to mark her body by her own choice, as opposed to the scars that streak her arms.

Dickens weaves the stories together, but it seems like she’s making several different movies here. One is about straightforward interviews with survivors. One is about a man (Lamson) reaching out to the only other people on the planet who understand what he’s been through, looking to belong. The last, and best, is the story of how a plane crashed and what the effects of that have been on everyone touched by it.

“Sole Survivor” is a puzzle whose pieces don’t fit together perfectly, but still create an cohesive whole.